I stopped by a local garden centre today on my lunch break just to take a look and see if they had anything interesting.

They did! A pallet full of recently dug Yew trees (Taxus Baccata).

They were a good size, had nice trunks and were very reasonably priced so I bought one home with me. The roots were wrapped but they weren't potted which didn't bother me as I figured I was bound to have a plant pot that would fit somewhere about the garden.

Unfortunately I didn't.

What I did have however was a strong plastic box which turned out to be exactly the right size. I screwed some wooden battens on the bottom for feet, drilled lots of drain holes and potted up my new tree.

Problem solved? Perhaps, there's just one issue. The box is translucent white plastic. It's not completely clear but you can almost see through it.

Does this matter? Will the light kill the roots or will it actually help?

There aren't any roots actually visible at the moment and obviously the trees not actively growing now it's December. I could easily wrap the box in black plastic sheet or something similar but I'm wondering whether I need to?

There's a large commercial tree nursery near me who grow all their trees in semi translucent bags. They claim that this produces an excellent fine root system and eliminates the problem of girdling roots. This sounds a bit similar to the supposed advantages of growing in pond baskets.

I've found that there is no detrimental effect to the root growth using translucent containers but have also found a bit of a problem with algae and weeds but i's not a big problem and as you can get some quite big containers of this type quite cheaply at places like Ikea it's definitely worth doing if your stuck for a quick solution.

I used a clear plastic container from WalMart for a pyracantha that I collected 2 years ago. The plant came out of the ground with very little in the way of fine/feeder roots, but grew very strongly and produced a very healthy root system in one growing season. I didn't notice any issues related to the container, roots grew right up to and along the sides. I don't know if there might be any long term effects, as I repotted the plant the next spring and used a different container.

I'll probably just leave it then and see how it grows in the spring (although like I said, wrapping the box in black plastic or similar wouldn't be much of a problem).

Vance, your wish is my command! Although in it's current state it just looks like an over grown Christmas tree in a box

The tree has quite a shallow root ball which spreads out to the right in this photo (hence the need for a rectangular rather than round container).

Obviously the whole thing is much taller than it will finally end up. I'd expect to remove at least two thirds of the height. The trunk splits into several sub trunks at about one third and I'm thinking that I could jin a couple of these at different heights and then use the branches in the lower third to build foliage pads with a bias to the right hand side to accentuate the existing movement of the trunk.

At least that's this weeks plan! Obviously I have wait and see if it even grows first.